A social network service is an online service, platform or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people (e.g., those who share interests and/or activities). A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as by e-mail and instant messaging. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.
In a multi-tenant social networking environment, where a tenant is an organization, a user of an organization may want to engage in collaborative activity (e.g., chatting, participating in an online meeting, sharing files, entering data in forums and wikis, community membership) with users who are visitors from other organizations. In such collaborative activity, information may be shared, and as a result, the user may want to know if the user is a visitor, and if so, the organization of the visitor, prior to sharing information.
Currently, when a user of an organization is engaged in collaborative activity with a user who is a visitor from another organization, the organization of the visitor is not readily available to the user. Instead, the user may have to perform a time consuming search to determine the organization of the visitor, such as by searching for identification information, such as a business card in electronic format or a profile that hopefully includes the organization of the visitor.
As a result, there is not currently an easy and efficient manner for the user to discover the organization of a visitor engaged in collaborative activity with the user.